2022.01.28
2022 is here!
Happy new year, everyone! After a few weeks of classes here at school, we are back to online learning for a while as Japan battles the Omicron virus. Hopefully this will be the last big wave of the corona virus. It’s been a long two years!
Today was English Day and I had the pleasure of giving the morning service in English along with Mr. Kirihara. We gave it from the broadcasting room rather than the Chapel and students were able to listen to it through Zoom. This past Monday, January 24, was the United Nations International Day of Education, and so I talked a bit about teaching and learning. Obviously education has changed a lot over the years; students today in Japan learn in modern classrooms and access a lot of information through reading whereas two thousand years ago, in Jesus’ time, people learned a lot of things through listening to people’s stories. Jesus is very famous for telling many stories which are called ‘parables’ in English.
One of my favorite parables is the “Parable of the Lost Sheep.” Imagine a person who has one hundred sheep. If one of them gets lost, even though 99 are safe, he will leave the 99 sheep and try to find that one lost sheep. And when he finds that sheep, even though it is only one, and he has 99 sheep already, he will feel so happy. As a teacher, I often think of that story. If a teacher has 100 students, and 99 are doing well, the teacher will not feel happy if one student is ‘lost’ or not doing well. Faced with this situation, the teacher will do all that he or she can to help that 100th student. And then when that last student does succeed, the teacher’s joy is huge. I feel extremely lucky to be working as a teacher here at Eiwa and, like all the other teachers, look forward to all of our students growing and succeeding along their own individual paths.
